“The Mother We All Long For”On Cindy Sheehan’s New Book by Shepherd Bliss
www.dissidentvoice.org
November 29, 2005

I
don’t know all the reasons why tears rise to my eyes when I read about
Cindy Sheehan. They flowed when I saw the photograph on the bright cover
of her new book
Not One More Mother’s Child. I noticed a young man (as I once was)
admiringly looking toward Cindy from the back row. Others held a banner
for Iraq Veterans Against the War.

“Cindy Sheehan is the mother we all long
for,” CODEPINK co-founder Jodie Evans starts her Personal Introduction to
the book. Suddenly I understood something. The tears connect me, in
gratitude, to Cindy -- who continues to mourn the April 4, 2004, killing
in Iraq of her soldier son Casey Sheehan and to organize against war.

Vietnam was the war of my generation. When I
resigned my U.S. Army officer’s commission to protest that war, my
wonderful, loving mother could not find it in herself to support me. In
fact, I was considered a traitor to my country within the military family
that gave its name to Ft. Bliss, Texas.

Though I may be more than a decade older
than Cindy, I consider myself one of her many grateful “sons.” She works
for those children currently at war, those who may someday be called to
war, and even for those of us who were once at war -- all of us.
Throughout her book she remembers the children of other
Gold Star Families for
Peace, which she helped found.

Cindy Sheehan may be the single most
important person to turn the tide of the American people against the Iraq
War. She set up Camp Casey outside Pres. Bush’s home in Crawford, Texas,
in August and has continued to dog him since with a single question: “For
what Noble Cause did my son die?” She has yet to receive an answer from
the president. She has concluded sadly, “My son died for nothing.”

On September 24, slightly less than a month
after leaving Crawford, Cindy spoke to 300,000 protestors in Washington,
D.C. “We need a people’s movement to end this war,” she declared. Two
months later, on Thanksgiving night, she returned to Crawford, where a
permanent sandstone monument to her slain son was unveiled with the words
“Sheehan’s Stand.” She spent the holiday with “my family of the heart.”
Once again, she was a couple of miles from Bush. Camp Casey has become a
place where people celebrate birthdays and holidays and even choose to get
married, because it is what Cindy describes as a loving place.

Not One More Mother’s Child opens
with Cindy’s straight-talking November 4, 2004, Open Letter to George W.
Bush: “Your reckless and wanton foreign policies killed my son, my big
boy, my hero, my best friend.” She poses the essential questions, “What
has happened to America? What has happened to our freedoms? Where did
sanity go?”

When she initially arrived in Crawford in
August, Cindy was a grieving mother known to few. Now she is well known
internationally and the author of a new book likely to become a
bestseller. One gets the impression that she is not going to finish
dogging Bush until he withdraws American troops from Iraq. This book will
help that mission by giving it more exposure and providing a fuller
picture of who she really is than the media offers.

Not One More Mother’s Child assembles over
200 pages of Cindy’s own words, ripe with intimate details, and 21 color
photographs of her with family members and supporters. It chronicles
Cindy’s Aug. 3 idea to go to Crawford, her Aug. 5 speech in Dallas to
Veterans for Peace, her first dispatch from Crawford on Aug. 6 and
material into late September.

This book is about healing -- one woman’s
story, our nation’s story. It documents Cindy’s movement through grief,
helplessness, and rage to

effective direct action. It concludes with
her essay “From Despair to Hope.” By telling her own story so clearly,
Cindy helps me, and others of us, to understand our own personal stories.
Cindy emerges in this book as a patriotic American committed to the
Christian tradition of peacemaking.

A Mother’s love -- as simple (and
complicated) as that -- is what it took to catalyze a peace movement.
Cindy makes her motivation quite clear: “love of Casey.” The book is full
of compelling details about his 24 years. Her goal is also clear: “to hold
George Bush accountable and to raise awareness about his lies and misuse
and abuse of power.”

Cindy Sheehan is one spunky American. She
does not sugarcoat words, but speaks the common language. Her writing is
direct, passionate, and inspiring. She speaks with integrity, authority,
determination, generosity, and clarity. Cindy has become the conscience of
America and helps us deal with the shame that so many people feel for our
difficulty at standing up to Bush.

I’ve seen Cindy only once, at a CODEPINK
booth at the Bioneers Conference this October. I like the way Jodie Evans
describes her: “nurturing, a she-wolf, a mother bear, unafraid. She has
empathy.” She radiates strength, calmness, and humility, which we need at
this historic moment when an increasing number of Americans finally feel
that the troops should leave Iraq.

The book is divided into six sections: her
writings, letters, speeches, blogs from the August 6-31 “Peaceful
Occupation of Crawford, Texas,” the September 1-26 “Bring Them Home Now
Bus Tour,” and a final section entitled: “The Camp Casey Movement Will Not
Die.”

In the three months since Cindy finished her
August stay in a ditch in Crawford, Texas, it looks increasingly likely
that Americans will not let Bush “stay the course.” Even members of
Congress are finally breaking their silence to come out against the Iraq
War. Cindy’s words ring loud and clear as Bush’s popularity plummets, “The
Camp Casey movement will not die until we have a genuine account of the
truth and until our troops are brought home. Get used to it, George. We
are not going away.”

Shepherd Bliss
writes for the Hawai’i Island Journal. He can be reached at:
sb3@pon.net.